


tumblr ficlet collection

by abcooper



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, prompt fills, reposts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-08-11 01:51:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 15,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7870906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abcooper/pseuds/abcooper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A reposting of tumblr fics</p><p>Rated E for the ficlet in chapter 9</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. game night

**Author's Note:**

> Since I've got a new sideblog (coop-writes.tumblr.com) I decided I wanted to get my old ficlets up on ao3 before I lost them forever - apologies to those of you for whom this is a repost! It has been interesting to go back through these - I now know that I am never allowed to use the phrase "she closed the remaining distance" in my writing ever again, since APPARENTLY I reach for it a lot. ;)

**prompt fill for** [ **@bridgetteirish** ](https://tmblr.co/m6HSM3OvO7Lptppn1RjIjfQ) **who is a darling and a wonderful sport through my slightly drunken messages!!**

“I can’t believe you invited her.” Alex said for the third time, shoving Kara lightly in the arm.

“Shut up.” Kara answered. She’d already used up her good retort and her semi-OK retort, and Alex wasn’t giving it a rest. “I doubt she’ll even come.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, you can make her come, Kara!” Lucy shouted from the couch. Winn and James looked identically horrified, and Alex snorted so hard she spat her mouthful of beer onto the kitchen counter.

“Shit.” she muttered, grabbing a paper towel. “Well, at least it missed the snacks. Kara, do not listen to drunk-Lucy. Cat is your  _ boss. _ The fact that you want to make her come is  _ not a good reason to invite her to game night.” _

_ “ _ I don’t want to make her….. do that!” Kara answered hotly. “I just - she knows I’m supergirl now, so she’s part of the team. I thought it might be nice to make her feel included!”

“Uh huh.” Alex muttered. “It’s all very friendly. We’re very inclusive here.” she grabbed the chips off the counter and stalked back into the living room, leaving Kara to mournfully follow her with the salsa and another six pack of hard cider.

“She’s not going to come anyways.” she repeated. “She’d be here by now if she was coming.”

The six-pack of cider was gone before the doorbell rang, but that wasn’t because a lot of time had passed.

“Please be a surprise fucking pizza.” Alex muttered, and then shouted, “no superspeed in the house!” after Kara, who had gotten from her folded up position on the floor over to the door suspiciously quickly.

“Ms. Grant!” Kara beamed, opening the door to allow Cat into the apartment. “Come on in, we just finished a game of Taboo, so your timing is perfect…”

“Supergirl.” Cat greeted her with a nod. She’d been refusing to call her anything else when they were in private. “I brought a bottle of wine, but I can see that you’re all doing alright on your own….” her sharp eyes scanned over the empty bottles and the open tequila on the table.

“No, we definitely need a bottle of wine. Hello, Cat!” Lucy waved from the couch with the tipsy confidence of someone who had quit her job at Catco and was beyond Cat Grant’s professional reach.

“Little Lane.” Cat’s lips twitched. “You’re looking well, going back to being a military drone seems to have worked wonders for you.”

“Yeah, I dumped my hot boyfriend too. It seems counterintuitive, but it all worked out really well.” Lucy agreed blithely. Kara’s phone buzzed in her pocket, and she pulled it out to see a text from Alex.

‘five bucks says Winn faints before the night is out.’

‘no bet’ Kara typed back, and then turned a brave smile on her boss. “Please make yourself comfortable, Ms. Grant! I’ll grab some glasses and we can open that bottle.”

It wasn’t as uncomfortable as it could have been, thanks to alcohol and Lucy’s social bravado. Winn pulled out early, with a wild, “oh is that the time, I think I left the oven on!” and James followed shortly after, his warrior-like nature overcome by the combination of his boss and his ex-girlfriend. That left just four people who had reason to genuinely like each other.

“Another game of taboo?” Kara suggested almost three hours later, but it was half-hearted, and Alex’s yawn was answer enough.

“I think I’m about ready to head home and get some sleep.” Lucy admitted. “Why don’t I escort you home, Agent Danvers?” She snaked a possessive arm around Alex’s waist, and with no one else around to share the moment, Kara risked exchanging a significant glance with Cat.

“Shut up, Kara.” Alex said without needing to look, and then added in a somewhat pointed tone of voice, “can we walk you out, Ms. Grant?”

“I think I’ll finish my glass of wine.” Cat answered calmly, making no move to get up off the couch.

“Suit yourself. Bye Kara!” Lucy called cheerfully, angling Alex toward the door. Kara waved them off, and then she and Cat were alone. After a moment, her phone buzzed.

‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do’

“Did you want to play another round of anything, Ms. Grant?” Kara inquired weakly, sitting on the other end of the couch.

“No, I think you and I have played enough games, Kara.” 

Kara clutched her glass of wine like a life-line. “Um…. yeah, I guess that was a lot of Cards Against Humanity for one sitting.” she offered. Cat turned to face her.

“Why did you invite me tonight?” she asked, eyes roaming over Kara’s face with serious intent. “I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you.”

For a moment Lucy’s teasing text swam in front of Kara’s eyes, but she shoved it away. “I - I invited you because you’re part of the team, Ms Grant.” she answered firmly. “We’ve come a long way lately, and I’m glad to have you as a part of my Earth family.”

It was true. They  _ had  _ come a long way - Cat had been instrumental in saving Alex and Hank, and the trust that had built between them in the past few weeks had obliterated any petty concerns or squabbles (Siobhan, Adam) that had come before it. But it’s not the whole truth. It’s not shared moments on Cat’s balcony, or Cat leaning in and telling her to remove her glasses, or the way that Kara was always drawn toward Cat like a compass pointing toward true North.

Rather than looking touched, Cat’s eyes shuttered with disappointment, but she nodded once. “I’m glad to be on the team.” she said blandly, placing her wine glass on the coffee table and rising. Kara rose with her.

“Cat, wait.” she murmured, grabbing the other woman’s hand. “I didn’t mean… it’s not just…” her courage failed her and she looked at Cat imploringly, hoping she would understand without Kara saying the words.

“I’m your boss, and I’m older than you, Kara.” Cat said quietly, her voice gentle. “I can’t start this. If you want it, you have to take it.” Despite her words, she moved closer to Kara, her face made vulnerable by something that looked startlingly like hope.

Kara closed the remaining distance.


	2. Better Angels - missing scene

‘Carpe diem,’ Cat thought bitterly. She watched, surrounded by all the other helpless people in the office, as the dot disappeared from the sky in the last-minute live footage that catco had managed to get onto the scene.

It wasn’t just a dot. It was some mysterious alien colossus with which Supergirl had single-handedly launched herself into space, but Cat’s headache had been too overwhelming for her to truly examine it while it was in the camera’s sight.

Then Supergirl had lifted it up into the sky, and her headache had gone.

Now she watched, alongside everyone else, as they waited for Supergirl to return. She wrapped herself firmly in her faith, like it was a shield that could hold up against the battering ram of Kara’s last words… of Kara’s goodbye.

‘She knew it was going to end like this.’ Cat thought, and Supergirl didn’t come back down.

It didn’t take long before official government vehicles arrived at the scene and shut the cameras down. It was a pity Lucy had quit; this was exactly the kind of situation Cat had hired her for. Cat listened to her remote cameraman sounding downright hysterical over the conference call, but it was a bit as though his voice was coming to her underwater.

“Shut down for now - there’s nothing else to see anyways, focus on sending in the footage you have before they think to confiscate your camera.” She was vaguely aware that James Olsen had stepped in to respond for her, that that was an order she should have given.

“Yes, do that.” she agreed distantly, and brought herself back enough to look into James’ face. He had that stupid watch, he might have more information …. But no, his eyes were shadowed, his lips pinched. She knew everything he did. Their eyes met in a moment of mutual understanding, and he grasped her shoulder briefly as he shuffled out of her office with everyone else.

 

The footage came in, and Cat went through it with a fine-tooth comb, but there just wasn’t anything to see. The cameraman had been too distant, had gotten there too late - she could make out the alien structure, and see the unmistakable primary colors that were Supergirl at its center, pushing it upward, and that was it.

Cat was dry-eyed as she passed it on to her producers and gave them permission to air it. Viewership went through the roof, breaking past records. Catco was the only news station with any real footage, and it made sense that Supergirl would give them one last moment of media triumph, didn’t it?

She went home early.

She and Carter curled up together on the couch. He was silent and solemn, giving her the emotional space that he would want if he was unhappy, and letting her cling to him a little without asking why. He was so good, and she was so grateful for him.

**

Kara didn’t show up for work the next day. Obviously.

Cat thought about putting on a show, about demanding that Winn explain why she hadn’t called in sick, but - what was the point really? He was wandering around in a daze, pale with unspoken grief.

She let it go.

_ Thank you for being an amazing mentor and….. friend. _

It wasn’t even her grief to share.

**

James came into her office without knocking right after lunch. He was wild-eyed, clutching his cell phone in his hand so tightly she worried he might crush it.

“She’s OK, they have her.” were the only words out of his mouth. He didn’t clarify the ‘she’ - didn’t make either of them pretend that they knew less than they did. And with only James as witness, she allowed herself to put her head down into trembling hands and exhale, just once, her relief.

**

There was a brief rush of satisfaction, a petty anger quenched, at the look on Kara’s face as Cat dumped her street food into a banker’s box.

_ How dare you say goodbye to me. _

She left Kara thinking she was fired all the way down the hall.

**

“The end of working girl always makes me cry.” Kara told her, and Cat almost went frozen as she murmured back, “me too,” because she hadn’t cried, even though she’d believed, really believed, that Kara was…. that she wasn’t going to come back.

She hadn’t been brave enough to cry.

She shut the door behind her as she walked forward, and then her lips were against Kara’s, pressing her up against the cheap desk next to the ridiculous over-dramatic banker’s box, Cat practically on tiptoe, because Supergirl was so fucking tall, when she wasn’t tiny and fragile and flying unprotected into space.

Kara’s mouth fell open under hers, surprise rather than permission, and Cat didn’t press the advantage. Kara was going to leave here and work things out with James, she was going to be awkward and stuttering and guilty about this, when she didn’t need to be, because this wasn’t about that.

She gave a dry sob, a strange hitched noise coming out against Kara’s mouth that she hadn’t given herself permission to make. She pulled back, aware that humiliation was about to set in on all fronts, and was stopped as Kara’s arms wrapped around her, gentle with concern. Kara redirected her as she pulled her back in, so that Cat’s face ended up against her neck, cradled under Kara’s chin, as finally, finally, she let the tears fall.


	3. post-season 1 fluff

**Happy happy birthday to** [ **@bridgetteirish** ](https://tmblr.co/m6HSM3OvO7Lptppn1RjIjfQ) **, thank you for all your excellent writing and general life awesomeness! I hope this is something like what you had in mind.**

“Kara!” the shout came from Cat’s office, and it wasn’t quiet, by any means, but Kara was pretty sure she wouldn’t have heard it through her new walls if she didn’t have super-hearing.

She got up anyways, and she wouldn’t say she ran down the hallway, but she moved quickly.

When she poked her head into Cat’s office, Cat was already glaring at her hapless new assistant - a sweet little nineteen year old slip of a girl named Marisol that Kara had picked partly because she seemed smart and competent, and partly because she thought that Cat’s well-hidden nurturing side might be brought out by someone who looked so awed and trembling.

‘You’ll never get anywhere if you don’t stand up for yourself.’ she could imagine Cat saying - it was easy to imagine Marisol’s spine straightening under Cat’s firm guidance. Cat liked to mould people.

Right now, Cat did not look like she was in a moulding mood, and she looked startled and annoyed to see Kara.

“Did you need something?” she asked pointedly.

“I, uh, was passing by and I heard my name?” Kara offered. Cat’s eyes narrowed.

“Oh, is Kara your name? I thought it was just a word that meant incompetent assistant who needs to be called 4 times before anything can get done.”

“Um….” Kara answered eloquently, and then she realized that it was 12:47 on a Wednesday, which meant that Cat would have had her breakfast early because on Wednesdays she took Carter to school, and with the 11:30 board meeting she wouldn’t have been free to order lunch, which meant that she was starving and unable to take her afternoon lexapro, not to mention that board meetings always stressed her out and her mother was scheduled to come into town this weekend…

For a moment Kara felt a pang of guilt that she’d left Cat with no one but Marisol to assist her, and then she realized that that was insane, that Cat had apparently been calling Marisol by her name because she couldn’t be bothered to learn a new one, and that the guilt should definitely go in the other direction.

“Uh, I was walking by because I’m on my way to grab some lunch, if you haven’t eaten yet, why don’t I grab you a lettuce wrap?” she offered. “As thanks for my fancy new office.”

“Hmm. No windows.” Cat reminded her in her snottiest voice, laden with relief. “At best it earns me a cheeseburger.”

Kara took the hint and brought her a cheeseburger with fries.

**

An assistant’s job was to assist. That meant Marisol’s job was to schedule appointments, screen phone calls, do some superficial editing, and get lunch. It was not the job of Cat’s assistant to pamper her.

That had just been one of the perks.

It was absolutely ridiculous, Kara admitted to herself, that she had come back  to the office at 9:30 on a Monday night and was refilling Cat’s m&m jar with m&ms that she had bought with her own money.

The office wasn’t totally empty, because catco ran 24/7, but most of the day shift had already left. Cat herself had cleared out hours ago. Kara was there because her job in the arts department was still new enough to come laden with imposter syndrome, and she had gone at the layouts she was compiling with a frantic zeal for perfection.

She had seen Cat twice that day, and both times Cat had been holding a drink - bourbon, not something light like wine. And she’d known that Cat was on edge and doubting herself after a weekend of sly jabs from her mother, and that she’d reached for the alcohol because there wasn’t anything else that she knew how to reach for.

She was so prone to self-destruction and so easy to nudge in another direction, like she was only waiting for someone to give her permission to be alright.

“Kara?” the voice from the doorway was disbelieving and Kara jumped guiltily, hiding the m&m bag behind her back as she spun around.

“Uh, Miss Grant, hi! I thought you’d gone home for the evening…”

“I did. I came back.” Cat crossed her arms. “Why do you look like I just caught you ejaculating into my desk drawer?”

“What? Ew! What?” she made a face, and then was struck by a horrible thought. “Has that happened to you?”

“Well no. But I’ve interviewed internationally known criminals, and you look guiltier than they ever did, so I thought - what’s worse than bank robbery, and could be accomplished in this office?” she nodded toward Kara’s hands, which had come out from behind her back to defend her from the horrible imagery Cat had produced. “Apparently, the answer is m&ms.”

“Hahaha,” Kara made an attempt at a laugh, and winced at how fake it sounded. Giving up on her own infamous attempts at lying, she fell back on honesty. “Well, I just, you know, still know your schedule from when I was your assistant, so I know your weekend must have been stressful. I just wanted to be sure you, uh, were taken care of?”

“Taken care of….” the tone Cat repeated it in was mocking, but the corners of her mouth quirked upward a little, and something in her eyes went soft and pleased. Cat Grant, Kara knew, liked to be taken care of a little. “You know, you’re not my assistant anymore Kiera, that means it’s not your job to take of me.”

Because of the softness, Kara felt bold enough to say, “I may not be your assistant, but I’m still your friend, right?”

“Hmmm….” Cat didn’t agree outright to that - which was good, because then Kara would have had to call the DEO about the possibility that myriad had altered everyone’s personalities - but she did help herself to a scoop of the m&ms, pouring them into a glass.

Then she held it out toward Kara, in a clear invitation. Disbelieving, Kara took a few. Cat looked pleased.

“So.” she said idly, swirling her m&ms around in the glass as she settled onto the sofa, “how are you liking the art department, Kiera?”

**

It wasn’t as though everything changed. But Kara had implicit permission to continue looking after Cat, a bit - as friends, because that was what friends did.

And it wasn’t as though it was that far out of her job description. Whatever Cat might say, all catco employees were expected to bend to her every whim.

She kept the m&m jar full, and she kept an eye on Cat’s schedule and tried to make sure that Cat always got her lunch on time. On Thursday, she overheard that Cat had a meeting at Carter’s school that evening, so when Marisol booked a 6pm meeting with the ad team, Kara quietly rebooked it for the next night.

She didn’t think anyone would have even noticed, but the next day she looked up to the sound of footsteps and saw Cat entering her office with a potted plant.

“Can I help you with something, Miss Grant?” she offered, and Cat rolled her eyes.

“Actually, I thought I could help you.” she answered, and plopped the pot down on Kara’s desk. “Since you seem so desperate to nurture something, I thought I’d see what I could find. Provide it with a little sunshine, I’m sure this thing will perk right up.”

“But I don’t have any windows.” Kara answered, since she didn’t want to say ‘thank you’ if she was just being ruthlessly mocked.

“Well then, just hit it with that Sunny Danvers charm.” Cat threw back, and settled herself calmly into Kara’s second chair - a squishy one that she was now praying Cat would never find out she’d brought in off the street corner.

Kara stared at her for a moment, processing, then forged bravely ahead. “I was thinking of ordering chinese for lunch, would you like some?” because it had been about 3 weeks since Cat had last had Chinese for lunch, and that was usually about how often she started craving Szechuan cauliflower from the expensive fusion place down the block.

“Get me that spicy cauliflower thing I like.” Cat answered absently, and then pulled a folder out of her briefcase and started running a highlighter through its content, apparently there to stay.

After a moment she said, “You would not believe what the new interns in accounting are trying to pull. I am going to skin them alive and make myself a stylish new hat.” and Kara smiled.

**

It was amazing what could become normal. The art department job was easy enough to settle into - Kara had always had a good eye for color and paid close attention to detail. But Cat Grant coming around her office for lunch dates was the sort of thing that she’d never thought she could get used to until it happened.

They settled into a pattern. Tuesdays and Fridays were their usual lunch days, unless Cat had a meeting she couldn’t avoid. It took Kara a few weeks to realize that Cat was actively doing her best to save that time in her schedule, that she was prioritizing their friendship in a way that Cat never seemed to prioritize anyone but Carter.

When she figured it out, she was so touched that she flew out and bought them fancy mini-cupcakes from that gourmet place Cat liked in New York for them to have as dessert that Friday.

Cat smirked when she saw them. “My my, did these arrive by air mail?” she asked with deliberate emphasis, and then looked pleased with herself.

“A friend had a conference.” Kara answered, and didn’t bother to elaborate. Cat had stopped pushing, really, and Kara was starting to think that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if Cat found out anyways. It was hard to stay intimidated by someone who was currently smelling a cupcake and looking as though she might have some kind of sugar orgasm in Kara’s chair, so Kara just looked at her and smiled and thought, ‘I want to kiss that woman.’

Then she choked on her cupcake.

**

“So then Scarlett turned to him and said, ‘then I guess you’re going home in high heels!’ and she just walked off in his boots!”

“That did not happen.” Kara insisted. They were sitting on the couch on Cat’s balcony, side by side, because they’d both had to work late and Cat wanted a glass of wine before she left.

Nothing had changed much, except for the tide of change they were already swept up in. Kara was a little more aware of the heat of Cat’s arm where it brushed against her as she took a sip of her wine, that was all. But she couldn’t let it be important - not when she had looked up one day amidst all the changes and realized that

  1. A few months in, she was becoming really good at her job, and
  2. Somewhere in those months, Cat Grant had become her best friend.



“It really did.” Cat insisted, neck arching gracefully as she tilted back to finish off the last of her glass of wine. “Of course, I think they’d had about six fancy cocktails apiece, so…”

Kara laughed and started to respond, when sirens passing by on the street below caught her attention. She didn’t even think before tilting her head to pick up where they were headed - flames and shouting.

“Well,” Cat’s sharp eyes hadn’t missed the tilt of her head, Kara realized. “I think that might be your cue to come up with an excuse to head out of here, Kara. Why don’t I make it easy for you and just say good night.”

And yeah, Cat always made jabs like that, sarcastic little comments to imply that she knew, even if she wasn’t supposed to, but she hadn’t really pushed at it lately. Suddenly it felt too easy for Kara to respond with bold truths instead of faltering lies.

“That is my cue, yeah. But if you wait a few minutes, I could give you a ride home.” she offered, and took off from the balcony.

**

Rescuing seven victims and putting out the warehouse fire was the work of moments, but by the end of it Kara was in a full-blown panic. What had she been thinking?

She hadn’t been thinking, she’d been drunk off Cat’s laughter and body heat and charm. And now all she could do was go back and face the music, and hope that everything wasn’t ruined.

Cat was still on the balcony - at some point while Kara was gone, she had refilled her glass of wine.

Kara landed quietly next to her and they stayed silent for a moment, standing next to each other at the balcony’s edge.

“Why admit it now?” Cat finally asked. And there was no denying the tinge of hurt in her voice as she added, “what suddenly makes me trustworthy now?”

“It wasn’t about that,” Kara admitted. “I trust you Cat. I’ve trusted you for ages. But I guess I just…. You’ve always admired Supergirl, you saw her as your equal. I wanted you to see Kara Danvers that way too, and how could you, if you just looked at me and saw her?”

Cat was silent for a long thoughtful moment before she responded, looking out into the city rather than into Kara’s face. “I’ve wanted to see you as my equal too. For a lot of reasons, Kara - because you are equal to me in so many ways, and because you’re somebody I wanted as a …. a friend.” Her tone was oddly subdued, even as she stepped closer. “You always give me what I need, and it’s hard to find equality in that. I’ve been trying to strike a balance with you. There are things I want from you that you shouldn’t give me unless you want them too.”

She finally looked up into Kara’s eyes, and Kara went breathless as she suddenly understood their closeness, Cat’s hesitancy. “Believe me, Cat,” she murmured, and she could feel the incredulous smile breaking out on her face as she stepped even closer, “this is something I want all for myself.”

She closed the remaining distance.


	4. Custody Battle

[ **rtarara** ](http://tmblr.co/mi2BrFvsEYSjbbClF62n27g) **asked for: Hmmm…how about a fic where things are still icy with Kara and Cat, but Kara finds Cat yelling and tearing up at her lawyer because Carter’s father got remarried and is pushing for full custody as Cat has been busy launching a new venture. Kara offers to help her. I’m a sucker for a fake to real marriage fic.**

“Watch out.” is the first thing Winn says to her when she steps off the elevator, but Kara doesn’t really have the time to spare for courtesies - she’s running late, juggling Cat’s latte with the folders she had to pick up from the external office.

She is therefore unprepared when she enters the inner sanctum. She’s been getting the cold shoulder lately, and she’s not ashamed to admit that she’s banking on it a little today - that Cat will be too invested in the icy chill of professionalism she’s created between them to really engage in a fiery knock-out personal-insult-studded take-down over a late latte.

She knocks politely at the edge of the door-frame as she walks in. Cat looks up, and the blast of emotion out of her eyes is  _ anything  _ but icy.

“Kiera! I’m so glad to see that your latte duties aren’t interfering with your busy schedule of poor wardrobe choices and failing to manage a love life.” is the opening salvo, and since it’s honestly a return to normalcy more than anything else, Kara feels a loosening of tension in her chest even as she puts on her most apologetic expression.

“I’m so sorry I’m running late, Ms. Grant, the satellite office needed to make some last minute edits and asked me to wait around so you could have the most updated version of their January spread, I have it here…” she drops the folder and the latte in front of Cat on the desk, and sends a hopeful side glance at Cat’s face, trying to subtly judge the impact of her groveling.

Cat’s jaw is clenched, there are poorly concealed bags under her slightly red eyes …. has she been crying? Startled, Kara instinctively moves to put a concerned hand on Cat’s shoulder, but Cat flinches away, and Kara takes the rebuke for what it is, pretending her movement was simply to open the folder and present its contents. They’re professional now.

“Thank you, Kiera, that will be all.” Cat’s tone is dismissive, but now that Kara is listening for it, she hears the raspy quality. It doesn’t take her heroic, superhuman instincts to know that something is deeply wrong today. This isn’t just continuing coldness over the disappointment of Adam’s brief appearance.

“What happened?” she asks Winn urgently the moment she is out of the office, and he shrugs at her.

“She’s been pissed off since she came in.” he says, raising his eyebrows in a way that indicates that she missed serious stormy weather. “Everyone’s steering clear, and it’s not like you were in her good books before this, so - I’m just glad you walked out of there intact.” he’s grinning at her, inviting her to joke, and instead of being delighted that their relationship is returning to normal, Kara has to resist the urge to snap at him. She doesn’t know what’s happened to put that look in Cat Grant’s eyes, but she knows she isn’t amused by it.

But that’s not Winn’s fault.

“I need to run out for her dry cleaning before I man phones.” she says instead. “Can you keep an ear out for me, I’ll be 10 minutes.”

The dry-cleaning place is only two blocks down, but there’s a gourmet grocery on the route, and Kara spontaneously ducks inside to purchase an overpriced bag of chocolate covered espresso beans. It’s not m&ms or white wine, but desperate times call for desperate measures. This seems like a unique situation.

She keeps an eye on Cat’s office as she makes her way through her inbox, and an hour later when she sees Cat deeply immersed in a phone call, she decides its a safe opportunity to drop off her offering.

“Don’t cite statistics at me, Damian.” Cat is saying as Kara quietly enters, and the name catches Kara’s attention because Damian is Cat’s personal lawyer, not the lawyer she employs through CatCo for business-related matters.

With a little wave of greeting, she quietly places a list of schedule updates in front of Cat on her desk, and then places the baggie next to it. She watches as Cat’s eyes narrow in on the beans, and then she reaches out, yanks the bag open, and bursts into tears.

“I KNOW all this already! Stop spouting legal aphorisms at me and call me when you have something useful to say!!” She slams the phone down and shoves herself upright in such an abrupt motion that her desk chair nearly topples over. Kara watches, dumb-struck, as she dumps the entire bag of chocolate into a wineglass, tears still streaming angrily down her face.

“Well?” she throws over her shoulder at Kara as she opens the balcony door. “Are you coming?”

And Kara follows her.

~~

They stand in silence for long minutes while Kara tries to look concerned and supportive while also pretending that she is too focused on the delightful view to notice Cat’s tears.  _ I am here to offer emotional support to this potted plant, or maybe to the railing,  _ is the body language she is aiming for.

It’s a wasted effort. Cat isn’t looking at her at all. She is staring angrily into the distance, her hand clenched so tightly around the glass she’s holding that Kara is a little concerned it may shatter.

Finally, when Cat speaks, it is in a tone of utter, casual, professionalism. “Kiera, I need you to clear my schedule tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be in an appointment with my lawyer. Carter’s father is suing for full custody, I’m afraid it may take up a great deal of my time in the coming months.”

“Ms Grant, that’s …. that’s terrible.” Kara stutters, stricken. She thinks back on the multitude of times Cat has scrambled to cover afternoons and weekends after Carter’s dad has abruptly canceled, the gentle tone she has heard Cat adopt as she tries to tell her son that his father has let him down again, the museum tickets and comic books Kara has gone flying off to purchase as Cat looks to soothe his disappointment. “He can’t  _ possibly _ win, he’s….” she cuts herself off. It’s not her place to comment on what a terrible father she thinks he is.

Cat lets out a wet, bitter laugh. “Oh, I know what he is.” she agrees. “But he’s also recently remarried - to a lovely, fat Martha Stewart-esque housewife, and all enthusiastic about his second chance at The Average American family. Do you know how often a single parent wins a custody battle against a married one?” she bites down viciously on an espresso bean. “Not to mention how often a mother wins in court against a father, when the man takes any kind of interest. And my reputation won’t help - that godforsaken email hack….”

She sounds defeated. Kara remembers, just months before, ‘I didn’t lose, I quit….’

“You can get married! I’ll marry you.” It’s an utterly ridiculous suggestion and Kara cringes immediately after she says it, aware that she deserves the coming ridicule. She doesn’t know what possessed her - except for the desperate need to  _ fix  _ this and wipe that empty look off of Cat Grant’s undefeatable face.

Cat doesn’t mock her though. Instead she smiles at her, a strange, complicated expression.

“Somehow I don’t think ‘lesbian age gap’ is going to be more of a hit with a jury than ‘single’, but I - I know you would. I know you’d do anything that someone needed from you. It’s like your super-power, isn’t it? You’re everything I - everything anybody could ever want.”

“You dumped Adam, and he left.” For a moment it sounds like a non-sequitur, but then she continues. “I hoped maybe he was staying because of me, but he was only staying for you.”

“That’s not -“ Kara starts, unsure what she wants to say, but Cat cuts her off with a sharp laugh.

“Oh, shut up Kara, I know. No grown man stays anywhere to bond with his mother. We were offering different things. But I - I gave him up. I wasn’t enough for him, and I knew it, so I gave him up, and it turned out I was right, and I am so so tired, Kiera.” Finally, she turns and looks into Kara’s face.

“I’m tired of never being enough for people.”

“You are enough.” the words come out more sharply than Kara meant them to, almost angry sounding, and it seems to catch Cat’s attention. “You’re more than enough, to Carter, and to me… you’re enough, Cat.”

They’re looking at each other too intensely now, it’s becoming something different than Kara intended it to be, the expression in Cat’s eyes desperate and frightened and maybe just a little bit hopeful. Kara doesn’t know yet how they’re going to solve this, but she knows they will, knows that they always do.

When their lips meet it’s fierce and rough, an expression of desire that has nothing to do with sex. For a moment when they pull back, Kara is terrified in the space between them - and then Cat is clinging to her and Kara is kissing whatever part of her she can reach, cheeks and forehead and eyelids, and the same words are being murmured, “you’re enough,” “you’re enough.”


	5. post-ep: fallen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from bridgetteirish: Supercat prompt: Post-hurling-over-balcony in Fallen. Missing scene.
> 
> CW: ABUSE

The worst part of the whole thing is seeing Carter solemnly take down his Supergirl poster and crumple it into the trash can. He doesn’t look angry, or even heartbroken, which is the uncomfortable best term for the raw emotion thrumming through Cat’s veins. He does it staunchly, with a quiet, practiced readiness to give up on the people who hurt him, who hurt his mother.

She has the strongest sense of deja vu, and it hurts, because she’d never wanted to repeat this moment with him.

She has nightmares that night of the ground rushing up to meet her, but in her waking hours, it’s Carter’s face that haunts her - the solemn maturity of a twelve year old saying goodbye to something he loved.

Afterwards when it’s all over, and she’s sitting in silence with Kara - sorry, with Supergirl - on her balcony, it’s still his face that haunts her as the loose end she can’t tie back up. Cat believes in Supergirl. She believes in her as a concept, and she believes in her as a person with a bright smile and gentle eyes and no sense of boundaries at all. She knows Kara will win the city back, one by one.

But she also knows that moving forward won’t bring them back around full circle. She can’t just hand her son a hero and shield him from the world. She never could.

“Carter’s father, Jonathan… he’s a real piece of work,” she says eventually, and Kara turns to look at her. There are tear tracks drying on her face, and Cat does her the courtesy of pretending not to see them. “When I married him I was just becoming successful, and he was equally successful, and he was good at making me laugh - it seemed like a smart move.”

Cat looks back out at the night sky - somehow even despite the light pollution of the city below, the stars cut sharply into the darkness. It really is beautiful.

There is a shift of movement as Kara comes closer, and then lays a tentative hand on her arm, unsure whether her comfort will be welcome. It isn’t, entirely, but not for the reasons Kara would think, so Cat doesn’t move away.

“We started having fights…. He’d get mad at me for missed dinners and late work nights, and it was hard to pinpoint what felt off about it because he wasn’t wrong, I know I’m not the world’s easiest person to be with, that I prioritize work over family. I’d already accepted those things about myself when I gave up Adam. So then if I knew that I was the problem, how could I really defend myself?”

The hand on her arm tightens. “Cat,” Kara whispers. She sounds agonized, and that was why Cat didn’t want her comfort - because that’s not the point of this story, not why Cat is telling it right now.

“It got worse, and then I got pregnant with Carter. And one night he hit me, and I thought, ‘I’m not going to do this to my child,’ and I left him. Because I could. Because I had an air tight pre-nup and an empire with a team of lawyers. It was easy, and nobody ever breathed a word about it to the media, and none of my demons ever had to see the light of day.”

She turns finally and looks directly at Kara.

“The point I’m getting at, Supergirl, is that I don’t believe in forgiveness as some magical thing. I don’t think it’s somehow a positive spiritual experience to have faith in people even when they hurt you. People who hurt you don’t deserve your faith.”

“I know,” Kara whispers. “I know, that I can’t make up for what I did to you…” There is a sob hiding in her voice, but she’s doing her best to tamp it down.

“It wasn’t you, really. I’m not saying you don’t have my forgiveness. You do have it - immediately and unconditionally. You’re not like my ex-husband,” Cat clarifies. “What I’m telling you is that…. Having faith in you, it has meant a great deal to me. But it’s not based in the way I feel about you, it’s not based in hopes and dreams. I have faith because you give me reasons to have it. Over and over again, you’ve earned it from me.”

“When it happened, you - you said I wasn’t going to let you down,” Kara said. “And I swear, I’m not going to, Cat.”

“I know you’re not. That’s what I’ve been saying,” Cat answers her.

She doesn’t tell Kara the worst part of the story. She doesn’t tell Kara about custody arrangements and compromises, and trying to navigate Jonathan’s insistent presence in Carter’s life.

She doesn’t say that almost two years ago, she and Jonathan had had an argument in her foyer. He’d raised his hand to slap her and she’d snapped, “we’re not married anymore, Jon - if you lay a hand on me again I will call the police so fast you won’t have time to hear the sirens.”

Carter had been coming down the stairs. He’d heard, and he’d understood. He’d refused to speak to his father for seven months - he’d kicked and screamed and locked himself in closets to avoid the custody arrangement until Jonathan had given up on enforcing them, and one day he collected and threw out every photograph of his father that he had, with the same staunch face.

Cat doesn’t tell Kara any of that. She just stands next to her in the darkness, Kara’s hand still a warm weight on her arm, and looks out at the stars. She is inexpressibly glad to know that sometime, days or weeks or months down the line, she will be buying her son a new Supergirl poster.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous prompt: "I wonder how many people have spat in your food."

“Take it back, and tell the chef that I came here for a steak - if I wanted a plate of overcooked bargain-bin beef, I’d have sent my assistant out for some hamburger helper and left it at that.”

The waiter stammered some kind of an apology and scurried off. Kara watched him go with sympathy - she recognized that scurry through long personal experience.

“Honestly,” Cat muttered, glaring at her wineglass. “Is it so hard to get a good steak?”

Kara took another bite of the large steak on her own plate, which she could detect nothing wrong with, and considered the woman across from her. “I wonder how many people have spat in your food over the years,” she mused, once she had swallowed. She washed it down with a gulp of her own wine, which had no effect on her but was extremely tasty. Maybe Cat had a point about five star restaurants.

When she looked back over, Cat was staring at her, narrow-eyed. “What?” Kara asked, putting the wine glass down a little guiltily. Maybe it was poor manners to keep shoveling food into your plate after your date had sent hers back to the kitchen.

“Why would anyone have spit into my food?” Cat asked. Kara paused for a moment, remembered that she was talking to a woman who had her own private elevator to avoid germs, and wished - yet again - that rewinding time was one of her superpowers.

“Well, you know…” she tried to explain, “you’re kind of…. rude, to waiters and chefs and things. And they’re alone with your food for ages where you can’t see it. You don’t think they might try to take revenge?”

“Take revenge?” Cat repeated disbelievingly. “Why don’t they try just serving me a halfway edible meal in the first place? It’s not a crime for me to expect competence out of others, Kiera.”

“I’m sure you’re right, I don’t know what I was thinking,” Kara agreed. “My steak is delicious, would you like a bite?”

Cat pushed her chair back from the table. “We are finding another restaurant,” she said firmly.

“Um…. but - steak?” Kara argued weakly, but she was already standing up.

“We are finding. another. restaurant.” Cat reiterated slowly, “and you are ordering both our food with your best sunny-Danvers smile.”

“You could just try being polite?” Kara suggested, suppressing a smile.

“I put a lot of time and effort into becoming rich and famous so that I would never have to be polite to a waiter again, Kara,” Cat said, “so you’re just going to have to order my food from now on. Call it creative problem solving.”

“You’re going to have to take me on a lot more dates if you want me there to order for you every time you eat at a restaurant,” Kara pointed out.

“Yes well,” Cat sniffed, “it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make,” and she slipped her arm through Kara’s as they made their way out the door.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "anonymous" prompt: Cat's new assistant keeps a stash of lollipops on her desk. Kara casually helps herself to one while helping said assistant fix Cat's calendar one afternoon. Cat can't help but notice.

Cat focuses _hard_ on her paperwork and pretends she can’t hear the whispered, frantic phone call happening at her new assistant’s desk.

“I literally erased the _entire_ calendar! She’s going to have me arrested and then killed, I don’t know what to do, do you know the _look_ she gave me because her lettuce wasn’t crispy enough, and now this??” the girl is hissing.

Cat thinks her name is Mona, but this is the sixth assistant in eight weeks, and the misremembered names aren’t even a front anymore. No prizes for guessing who Mona is on the phone with, though.

Sure enough, a couple minutes later, Kara comes sauntering up to her old desk and gives an elaborate fake stretch. “JUST STOPPING BY TO SEE HOW IT’S GOING MIRA! HAVING A NICE DAY?” she says loudly. Cat watches through narrow eyes.

Kara leans casually on the corner of the desk and takes a pink lollipop out of a cup of them that Mira keeps on her desk. She unwraps it as Mira points the computer screen away from Cat’s glass wall and toward Kara.

Mira starts whispering frantically, pointing at the screen, and Kara reaches out with the tip of her tongue and starts drawing light circles around the head of the lollipop.

Cat puts down her pen.

With one hand, Kara points to something on the screen, which Mira obligingly clicks. Cat’s not really paying attention to that hand anymore, because the other hand is now gently running the lollipop over Kara’s slightly parted lips. They are already pink, just slightly shimmering with some kind of cheap lip gloss that should look utterly ridiculous on an adult human, but instead they combine with sunkissed skin and shining hair to create this picture of untouchable innocence. Something about Kara’s lip gloss makes Cat want to unwrap her lollipop.

Slowly, almost as though she doesn’t know she’s doing it, Kara starts to push the lollipop in and out of her mouth, barely going in. She pushes it a little farther and then her tongue darts after it as she pulls it out, as though she hasn’t gotten quite enough.

Mira says something, and Kara reaches into her pocket and pulls out a thumb drive, handing it over. She waits as Mira plugs it in, sucking the lollipop all the way into her mouth at last so that it creates an obscene bulge in her cheek, twirling it idly around.

It is utterly ridiculous that Cat can’t look away.

Whatever is on the flashdrive must save Cat’s calendar, because Mira actually leaps up and gives Kara a hug. Kara laughs, patting her reassuringly on the back.

“WELL, THANKS FOR SHOWING ME THAT KITTEN VIDEO, IT REALLY BRIGHTENED MY AFTERNOON, BUT I BETTER GET BACK TO WORK,” she announces loudly, and turns to go. Cat rolls her eyes and pulls out her phone.

‘Get in here’

She sees Kara reach into her pocket in response to the buzz, and then she switches direction and knocks lightly at Cat’s glass door.

“Your undercover skills are an embarrassment,” Cat tells her, and Kara grins around the lollipop stick that is still resting in her mouth.

“Are you going to fire Mira?” she asks. “I like her. She’d do fine if you didn’t make her so nervous all the time - and don’t try to pretend you’re not doing it on purpose for fun, because I know you are. That lettuce was fine.”

“Well….” Cat pretends to consider. “I suppose having an incompetent assistant has some advantages, if you’re going to come be a tease in front of my office every time she screws something up.”

Kara pulls the lollipop out of her mouth with an obscene pop and leans in close. “You know,” she says conspiratorially, “it’s not teasing if I intend to follow through later.”

“Hmm…” it’s only her glass walls that keep Cat from pulling her girlfriend in and demanding that she put that pink mouth to good use. With reluctance, Cat looks away instead, picking her paperwork back up. “Get back to your office and get your actual work done, Danvers,” she says. “I expect you home at a reasonable hour tonight… I have plans for you.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: Can you write a supercat married au where Kara and cat are having problems and Kara asks cat for a divorce. Even tho cat doesn't want a divorce, she could never say no to what Kara really wanted and cat believes a divorce is what Kara really wants even tho what Kara really wants is for cat to fight for them. Really angsty with a happy ending?
> 
>  
> 
> Except when I wrote this it didn't get a happy ending, it just ended in angst, and I think it might be the ANGSTIEST thing I've ever written, and no one on tumblr liked it. So... be warned? ;)

It takes Kara 17 minutes to wash the dishes. Carter wanted pancakes for breakfast, and Kara has never really mastered a mess-free cooking style so there are a lot of them - bowls and plates and a pan that really needs some scrubbing before it goes in the dishwasher because the grease burned on. **  
**

With her powers, Kara could have done them in under five minutes. The grease stain would have fallen to its knees and begged for mercy. It has been eight months since she lost her powers, though, and Kara doesn’t keep count anymore. At first it had been a daily tally in her head, 12 extra minutes lost on dishes, 4 extra minutes on getting dressed in the morning, 25 minutes lost commuting to work…. It added up quickly and painfully.

Now, though, it’s just the routine. Carter wanted pancakes, so 17 minutes for dishes.

Kara is only thinking about the dishes at all because there are other things she doesn’t want to think about right now. Cat’s flight is getting in at 11am, the end of a 4 day business trip, and Kara isn’t ready to think about her wife just yet.

She kills the next few hours on applications.

Alex had come in on a Saturday morning about three months in and bullied Kara into a pair of jean shorts and a paint-splattered t-shirt and then out the door, and they’d spent the day rebuilding a public school playground. Afterwards Alex had suggested, gently, that maybe it would do Kara good to find other ways to help people. “You’re more than just your powers, Kara - you always have been,” she had said.

Kara is so, so grateful for Alex.

The five months between then and now have been a slow journey as Kara has tentatively explored her capabilities as an ordinary human. The result is that Kara works part time for a non-profit downtown, and teaches art classes to urban youth on Sunday afternoons. She’s also filling out applications to get her master’s degree in urban policy. It’s a little slower and smaller than donning a cape, but it’s not nothing.

She closes the webpage and shuts her laptop when she hears Cat’s key in the door. Cat hasn’t been verbally disapproving of anything Kara is doing, that’s not the problem.

Kara waits in silence as she hears Cat pad past the little study and up the stairs, dragging her small carry-on case up to their bedroom. Only when she’s sure Cat is out of sight does she go into the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove, reaching into flawless white cabinets for two mugs and the box of Cat’s favorite jasmine tea.

She is letting it steep when she hears a throat clear behind her.

She turns and despite herself she smiles, because she hasn’t seen her wife in four days and Cat looks beautiful, her hair a little mussed from traveling, and changed into a comfortable pair of what are technically still slacks but might as well be yoga pants.

“Welcome home,” Kara says quietly, and Cat smiles and leans in and kisses her, perfunctory, the way you kiss someone when you aren’t focusing on it because you know you’ll do it a thousand more times. Or maybe just the way you kiss when it’s a duty rather than a pleasure.

“You would not believe the morons I just tolerated in the airport,” she announces, and Kara lets the familiar tone wash over her as she hands Cat a cup of tea and cradles her own, leaning back against the counter.

She is coming around, slowly, to a particular kind of pleasure in being able to clutch a tea mug as tightly as she wants to when she is unhappy without ever worrying about whether it will shatter.

Cat cuts herself off abruptly, finally noticing Kara’s posture. Her own goes a little stiffer in response. “Is something wrong?” she asks.

Kara smiles at her, but she can feel it wobbling incorrectly across her face. “Can we talk?” she asks gently, and lays a hand on Cat’s arm so Cat will know that she’s not, Rao, in trouble or something stupid like that. Cat is completely stiff under her hand.

“Yes alright, let’s sit,” she says irritably, and leads Kara into the living room, where she seats herself in a slim blue armchair.

Kara wishes for a moment that Cat had chosen to sit instead on the couch. It’s made of tan leather and squishiness, the kind of thing that you sink into and that is almost too comfortable to match the modernist aesthetic of the rest of the penthouse. If Cat had sat there, Kara could have sat next to her and put a head on her shoulder, and maybe Cat’s arm would have come up around her to stroke her hair.

But Cat chose the armchair, and Kara sits across from her, clutching her tea and watching the steam come off its surface.

“Spit it out Kara, what’s wrong?” Cat says, and Kara knows that her tone is only so uncaring because she’s wondering if she is caught.

She is.

“The Detroit office called the house while you were gone, “ Kara says, and hears Cat shift in the chair. “I wouldn’t have picked up your work call, except that I knew you were at the detroit office, so I figured it was probably you calling.” She finally looks up, and sees the expression on Cat’s face. Is it guilt, maybe? It’s hard to tell. Kara never realized until she lost them how much she depended on her powers to read other people. Hearing a heartbeat speed up, a breath catch - a thousand other clues that are now lost to her. She is half-blinded, and she cannot read the look on her wife’s face.

“I, uh - I know you haven’t really been on a business trip these four days,” she finishes a little lamely, in case that isn’t clear.

“It’s not what you’re thinking…” Cat says after a long pause. She opens her mouth to say more, but Kara cuts that line of conversation off.

“I don’t think you’re having an affair,” she says, and for a moment she thinks she sees relief spark across Cat’s face - it’s going to be very short-lived. “I think you were trying to get away from me - that you were just desperate to escape for a couple of days.”

“Kara…”

“No, Cat, I get it. It’s alright.” She tries her best to smile. “It’s been really hard on you. You married me when I was this - this amazing person, who could save burning buildings and then go buy you lunch from that sushi place you like in Metropolis and still be back in the office in time to get the paperwork done and share a drink with you on your balcony. And then just, overnight, practically - I had to start being someone else. I started being this person who burned herself every time she tried to use the kitchen, and you had to comfort me when I started crying about needing to buy bandaids when I’d never needed to use one before, and I stopped working at your company… it’s been a lot for you. It’s not what you signed up for. Anyone would need a break.”

“I don’t mind being there for you when you’re having a hard time, Kara,” Cat says sharply. “It is in fact exactly what I signed up for when I married you. But you’re right, I needed a break - I was tired, I kept getting angry when I should have been sympathetic. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings by saying I was burnt out, so I lied about where I was going. But that’s OK - I had a break, and now I’m back.”

It would be so easy to accept that, Kara thinks wistfully. She could just nod her agreement, and then Cat could ask about Carter and mock Kara for making him pancakes every time he asks even though he’s fourteen years old now and perfectly capable of making them himself.

It would be easy, but it wouldn’t be right. She steels herself and says, “I started sending in those grad school applications while you were gone,” and sure enough, Cat purses her lips a little, and Kara knows that she’s doing the right thing. “The reason I did that is because my powers aren’t coming back, Cat.”

“You don’t know that,” Cat says sharply.

“If they were going to come back, they would have by now,” Kara says firmly. “I have to find other ways to live, and other things to believe in. I’m not going to burn myself in the kitchen and cry over the band-aids anymore, that part is over, and I’m so so grateful for the way you supported me through it. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have you.”

Cat is just watching her now, her face pale, and Kara wishes she could read her the way she used to be able to.

“But there’s no moving backward from this, and I need to move forward, Cat. You hate that I quit at CatCo, and you hate that I’m applying for schools… you hate waking up in the morning next to someone who isn’t the person you married. And you keep hoping that my powers will come back and this will be over, but that isn’t going to happen.” Kara takes a deep breath and delivers the final blow. “I think it would be a good idea if I left for awhile… we can get some space and then revisit things,” she says.

Cat’s mouth parts just a little - she looks as though she has been hit. For a brief moment Kara thinks - well, she hopes - that maybe Cat is going to fight her on this. That Cat will say she’s wrong, that she doesn’t care what Kara can do as long as she does it by Cat’s side.

That’s not what happens.

“This is what you want?” Cat asks her, in a voice completely devoid of tone. “To leave for awhile?”

“I think it’s for the best,” Kara says, and on best her voice cracks. She can feel the tears gathering in her eyes, and she tilts her head up in an effort to hold them back from falling.

“When will you leave?” Cat asks.

“Now,” Kara says. “I have my stuff at Alex’s, we can - we can figure out anything else I’ve left here. And I’m not - I’d still like to see Carter, of course…”

“Of course,” Cat agrees. “Like you say, we’ll figure it out. I think perhaps it would be best if we both had a few days of processing time before we consider the details. If you’ll excuse me Kara, I need to check in with the main office.”

Cat flees the room, and though her voice never wavered, Kara knows perfectly well that it’s because she’s crying - it’s not as though losing her powers has undone five years of knowing Cat Grant better than anyone else. It is no longer Kara’s right to go after her though.

It has been eight months since she lost her powers. Kara is coming to terms with who she is now. She loves teaching her art students, and she feels the tentative stirrings of passion for the school programs she’s applying to.

She likes the person she’s becoming as much as she likes the person she has been… and Cat doesn’t. Kara can’t help but wonder what that says about how Cat really loved her in the first place.

It’s time for them both to move on.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> smut-writing exercise, for the prompt strap-on

Cat can feel water gathering at the corner of her eyes, but there’s not much she can do about it. Her hands are firmly tied above her head. With no way to surreptitiously blot at them, the tears fall down her cheek.

Kara gently wipes them away. “Is this too much for you?” she asks, and there’s no judgment in her voice. They haven’t bothered with safe words, there’s no element of play to what they’re doing - the moment Cat asks Kara to stop, she will be untied and safely curled in her girlfriend’s arms. And Kara has made sure, very sure, that Cat always feels safe saying no to her.

Right now, Cat doesn’t want to. “No, it’s good,” she croaks, and Kara rewards her with a proud smile.

It is good, and Kara hasn’t really even done anything yet. Only meticulously tied Cat’s hands to the metal bar that she has screwed across the doorway into her kitchen. It’s high enough to be a reach, so that Cat’s calves are starting to burn a little from the effort of keeping weight off of her wrists. She’s utterly helpless, naked and balanced on her toes. She feels the juxtaposition of it - the sight of Kara’s artistically quirky living room decor stretched out in front of her, the same room where she has play Taboo with Kara’s friends. Not to mention, the wide window looking out into National City’s night.

Everything about it makes her aware of her own body, of how dirty she must look, of how degrading it is to be here like this and to want it. It brings tears to her eyes, but she would never lie to Kara - it is good, and her face is not the only thing getting wet.

As if responding to her thoughts, Kara pushes Cat’s thighs apart - forcing her higher onto her toes - and swipes two fingers through her. Cat cries out at the sensation, and Kara holds her fingers up, they’re glistening.

“Yeah, this is what you need, isn’t it Cat?” Kara says softly. She is gentle and loving, almost maternal maybe, but her tone does nothing to lessen the weight of her control. “Don’t worry about anything, I’ve got you…I can give you exactly what you need tonight, that’s why we’re here.”

Kara is naked except for the black leather straps wrapped firmly around her muscled thighs, supporting a thick black curved dildo. It’s not one Cat has seen before - they’ve played with strap-ons, but never with anything this size.

Looking at it, and listening to Kara’s soothing voice, she thinks maybe it really is exactly what she needs. Kara seems to just know, somehow - in the office and here, she knows what Cat needs, and she never gets it wrong. Cat can trust her with this. She closes her eyes and relaxes into that trust.

Kara steps in close - she feels the warmth of her girlfriend’s skin against her, and the brush of the dildo between her thighs. Without conscious permission she tries to grind down onto it, already eager for any kind of friction, but her motion is surprisingly limited by having her arms tied into place. Kara wraps her arms around Cat’s body, hands landing on her ass to hold her steady. “Wait just a little longer, darling,” she murmurs. “I’m not going to tease you tonight, you’re going to get everything you want.” She places gentle, tender kisses along Cat’s neck, almost worshipful, and Cat shudders and shakes beneath them. It’s nothing she’d ever gone looking for before, this odd mix of love and control, but it’s perfect, it’s exactly what she needs…

Then Kara’s hands from a little further down Cat’s backside to a firmer grip on Cat’s thighs and she lifts, balancing Cat’s weight easily on her arms and bringing her down onto the dildo. Cat moans out loud as the tip breaches her - it really is thicker than anything they’ve used before, and it stretches a little. Kara is slow but relentless; she continues to pull Cat steadily forward until it’s entirely within her, and Cat can feel the rough texture of the leather belt pressed pleasantly against her.

“How’s that feel?” Kara asks.

“Big,” Cat gasps, because it does, it burns a little, but she doesn’t mean that in a bad way, and she can tell from Kara’s pleased hum that Kara knows exactly how she means it.

“Take a moment to get used to it,” she commands gently, and then captures Cat’s lips with her own, holding them both entirely still otherwise as she sucks Cat’s lower lip into her mouth and nibbles at it gently. She keeps going, with light teasing kisses until Cat is squirming against her, desperate to be moved.

“Karaa, you said you weren’t going to tease,” she reminds her, past being mortified by the tone of genuine whining that has entered her voice. Kara laughs gently.

“That’s true, I did say that,” she agrees, and she pulls Cat an inch up along the dildo, before moving her back down again. Cat gasps, air leaving her lungs in an instant as she focuses in on the sensation. Kara’s control is absolute, and she holds Cat steady as she brings her off of the dildo a little more each time until Cat is being moved all the way to the tip, and then pulled firmly back onto it. The sensation is almost like having sex in a swing, but there are no straps or ropes, nothing but Kara’s firm hands wrapped beneath her thighs. Kara moves her hard, and at no point does she check in, or promise that it won’t hurt.

It’s perfect. The curve of the dildo is hitting Cat exactly right each time it enters her, and the leather belt brushes Cat’s clit every time Kara pulls her flush against it.

She can tell that it’s hitting Kara in the right places too, from the way that Kara’s eyes are fluttering shut, the way that her breath is starting to come in shorter bursts, but none of that affects Kara’s pace, and Cat surrenders herself to the rhythm of it, feeling the heat build inside of her until finally she comes, shuddering and clenching as Kara continues to pump her up and down.

Kara doesn’t stop, and still doesn’t stop even when Cat has shuddered through the last pleasurable convulsion, and now the pressure of the belt against her clit is just on the border of too much, something that she writhes away from instead of pressing into.

“Kara…” she begs, and Kara doesn’t slow down or speed up at all, just rubs her  thumb reassuringly along Cat’s ass.

“You’re not done yet, sweetheart, I know you have another one in you…” she says encouragingly, and Cat’s not sure she agrees, but she wants Kara to be impressed, so she grits her teeth and relaxes into the penetration, trying to find her way back to a rhythm.

It’s not a slow pleasant build towards the edge anymore, instead every motion makes her tremble and groan, and her arms are starting to burn from being held so long above her head, but as Kara continues Cat realizes that it is good, riding along the peak until she shivers violently, head thrashing back, and falls over it a second time.

“Good, that was so good, look at you, you’re amazing,” Kara is saying, and she’s supporting Cat against her with one hand now as the other reaches up and undoes the straps around her wrists, letting her down from the bar so that she is safely held in Kara’s arms, the dildo still inside of her.

“Come here, sweetheart,” Kara says gently, running a hand through Cat’s hair as she carries her into the bedroom, and Cat shivers against her. She shifts her hips against the silicone, unsure if she’s trying to get away from it or get more of it, and then Kara lays her gently on the bed and pulls out.

“Look at you,” she murmurs, running her hand soothingly down Cat’s back, “you’re so tense… you’re not quite done yet, are you baby?” Cat doesn’t have an answer so she doesn’t give one. She isn’t sure what she needs, but Kara will know. She can trust that.

“Turn over,” Kara urges her gently and helps her, so that Cat is lying on her stomach with her face pressed into her arms against the mattress. Kara arranges her so that her legs are spread, her ass held into the air, and then slowly and gently, the dildo presses back into her.

She’s so used to it now that she barely feels the stretch, and from this position the belt is no longer rubbing against her clit, but it’s still leaning almost toward painful now. She shakes a little as Kara eases gently in and out of her, even that almost too much, but somehow she doesn’t want it to stop - Kara was right, she wasn’t done…

And then Kara’s fingers press down onto her clit, the first really solid pressure she’s had there all night, and she screams as a third orgasm crashes over her with none of the gentle shivers and relief of the previous two. This is something wilder and she thrashes against it, screaming herself hoarse as her vision flickers gray for just a moment.

When it ends she is left panting and limp against the mattress. She hears the sound of the leather belt unbuckling as Kara pulls off the strap-on and then she is pulled into Kara’s embrace.

“You’re incredible,” Kara tells her, holding her close, and her voice is low and awed, ringing with all the sincerity and love that only Kara ever expresses so openly to her. Cat sighs and nestles into her arms. It’s exactly what she needs.


	10. sabotaged dates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous prompt: "Are you sabotaging my dates?!" - Supercat

“Are you sabotaging my dates!?” Kara demanded in a harsh whisper. Wine was splattered down the chest of her pale pink dress in a shocking explosion of color, droplets running down to ruin the fabric as far as mid-thigh before hitting the distressingly visible skin above Kara’s knee. Since when did Kara wear dresses that put her legs on such tempting public display? **  
**

“Oops,” Cat said, holding up her empty wine glass in a gesture of ‘what can you do?’ “I’m so sorry, Kiera, perhaps I’ve had one too many of these. You know how clumsy I can get after a few glasses of wine.”

She only said it to relish the sheer outrage that spread across Kara’s face. “I  - you -” she stuttered, too kind to say aloud in public that as Cat’s assistant for two years, she was well aware that Cat was basically a functional alcoholic and it would take a few bottles of wine to make her stumble.

The heated outrage on Kara’s face sparked something inside her, a deep satisfaction that was partly petty, but partly something else, something that craved being the undivided focus of Kara’s attention…

Lena Luthor’s hand on Kara’s arm was like a bucket of cold water. Even worse was the expression of gentle concern that the arm was attached to. “Kara, are you alright? Why don’t we get you cleaned up…” she suggested, and Kara’s attention was diverted entirely as she beamed at her savior.

She didn’t look back as Lena led her to the bathroom and Cat glared after them both, resentful. Then she turned her glare sharply on the remaining onlookers, who quickly found reason to scatter, and headed toward the bar on a quest to refill of her wine.

It was understandable that Kara might think Cat was sabotaging her dates. This was, technically, the third one Cat had managed to put a crimp in. It wasn’t planned sabotage, exactly. It was just that when Cat had left National City to dive into new waters, she had pictured CatCo waiting quietly for her return. She knew she could trust James not to make any changes to company policy without her approval.

The last thing in the world she’d expected was to show up to a charity function, all set to network for her new non-profit in support of immigration reform, and see infamous businesswoman Lena Luthor with Cat’s assistant hanging on her arm.

Of all the things that were meant to be waiting for her return, Kara was the one Cat was looking forward to most. It had never occurred to her, after almost three years of dancing around one another, that Kara would simply… move on.

Dumping wine down Kara’s dress didn’t really solve the problem, of course. Although Kara should thank her - that pale pink shade completely washed out her skin-tone, the enormous wine stain was practically an improvement. Unfortunately, it still left Cat nursing a glass of wine at the bar and Kara in the very fancy bathroom, being undressed by Lena Luthor, a woman who undoubtedly knew how to make excellent use of this kind of opportunity.

She didn’t stay long enough to witness the aftermath of their little bathroom excursion. She didn’t want to see if Kara was wearing Lena’s sweater and a flushed expression, if Lena was smirking like a woman who was accustomed to getting exactly what she wanted and knew tonight would be no exception.

Instead she finished her glass of wine and went home. She’d leave for Metropolis again in the morning, and she could let all of this go.

It was almost 2am when something woke her. She blinked heavily, turning on the lamp, confused for a moment, until she saw the fluttering primary colors on her balcony and heaved her legs over the side of the bed to let Kara into her room.

“Do you know what time it is, Supergirl?” she asked in lieu of a greeting.

“I needed to talk to you before you left again, since you’ve been very clear that you don’t want visits in Metropolis.”

“I need some time to sort my new life out first,” Cat said, repeating an old excuse that hadn’t made much sense the first time. She didn’t know why she’d forbidden Kara to visit, except that the first time Kara had tried had been right after Cat had seen her for the first time on Lena Luthor’s arm, and she’d been filled with this odd defensive need to move on fastest and hardest, like she and Kara were racing to break each other’s hearts.

“And I’m giving it to you,” Kara agreed, crossing her arms. “I can’t help but think that you’re not giving me the same thing back.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Cat shot back, daring Kara to contradict her. Even as she said it, though, she was eyeing Kara for evidence of her activities between the charity dance and now. Surely she hadn’t eaten canapes in a wine-soaked dress for four hours before coming to talk to Cat? The thought that Kara had stopped to scold her on the way home from another woman’s bed was completely sickening.

“You know exactly what I mean,” Kara muttered, but her tone was deflated, like Cat’s side-step had taken the wind out of her sails. She moved further into the room to sit on Cat’s bed, her arms crossing self-consciously over the symbol on her chest. When she looked back up at Cat, her eyes shone in the dim lamp-light with something that looked like hurt. “I don’t understand what you want from me, Cat. You’re acting jealous, but - if you want me, why do you keep pushing me away?”

Cat rubbed her hand over her eyes, suddenly far more tired than the late hour could account for. “Why try to figure out what I want now, anyways, Kara?” she pointed out. “You’ve already decided what you’re going to do. You know I’m leaving town tomorrow, I’m not going to interfere anymore… what’s the point of this sordid little confrontation when you’ve already got everything you want?”

“I don’t,” Kara answered, and she sounded as tired as Cat felt. “I….” her voice wavered with uncertainty for a minute, and then she came to a decision and continued, “I’m not actually dating Lena.”

“Oh no?” Cat asked, an incredulous little laugh escaping from her lips. “Of course not, you’ve only shown up on her arm to every major event of the past month…”

“She’s being hunted by an alien assassin,” Kara interrupted, her voice grim. “I’m there as a bodyguard. We needed a cover, and since she’s recently come out publicly, this seemed like an easy solution.”  
  
“You’re fake-dating the sister of the most infamous anti-alien bigot on the planet?” Cat demanded, pushing aside the words ‘alien assassin’ for another day. Then she thought through what she’d just said, and let hope steal her breath away. Kara hadn’t moved on, had just been going out with Lena Luthor to protect her, like she would protect anyone… except Cat had seen the way Lena looked at Kara, the possessive spark.

“She wants it to be real though,” Cat pointed out as she put the pieces together, and then winced. Rookie mistake - the last thing she wanted was to give Kara the confidence to pursue Cat’s rival.

“That might be true,” Kara agreed, her tone neutral. “I wouldn’t say no if she made a move.” Cat’s heart felt like lead in her chest, but Kara continued, relentless. “I mean, it’s not as though I’m taken, is it? That would be a very different story.” She looked Cat boldly in the eye, making no effort to disguise her point, and god, Cat had never been able to resist Kara at her most brazen. She reached forward and grabbed Kara’s shoulder, yanking her forward off the bed so that their lips met in something that was almost more of a headbutt than a kiss. It softened as Kara’s mouth parted under hers, her arms wrapping around Cat’s shoulders to tangle in her hair. When they pulled back, Kara was looking at her with shining eyes, her mouth curving into an irrepressible grin.

“You,” Cat growled, “are most definitely taken.” And she leaned back in to prove it.


	11. his dark materials AU

Kara’s daemon settled as a sparrow. **  
**

When she first arrived on Earth, Eliza made her keep Nadira hidden all the time, confined to small forms that could fit inside the little box Eliza gave her. It was a cage, if they were using honest language, but Earth had all sorts of words for lying about all kinds of things. Nadira hated it and Kara didn’t like imprisoning her, but what was the difference really? Being allowed to wander all of Earth was just being trapped in a larger box. And she understood why Eliza insisted on it - everything would be ruined if human children saw Nadira taking on the form of a lumir, or an oliphent. Those creatures were gone now, just like everything else. It was up to Kara and Nadira to adapt.

Middle school was a trap of its own, and Kara hated it as much as Nadira hated being boxed up. “If you let me out, I’ll become a koa-ruhl and smash them all,” Nadira muttered in Kryptonian from Kara’s pocket, and Kara smiled a little at the thought, even as she reprimanded her for the violent sentiment.

“Why’s your sister just standing there smiling?” she heard a student ask. “Is she some kind of nutjob?”

She couldn’t hear Alex’s quiet response; the lead-lined glasses Jeremiah made her provided that small amount of relief.

She ignored it, instead looking up at the tree in the schoolyard. Trees had been a rarity on Krypton by the time Kara was born, and they hadn’t had anything like the delicate little feathered animals she could see nesting along its branches. They peered down at her with equal interest, calling to each other in humming little chirps and purrs.

“I want to see,” Nadira complained as Kara giggled, watching the creatures’ antics. One of them, a brown plain type that seemed to be the most common version, tilted its head at her, the angle of its neck something a little different and goofier than anything Kara had seen before. She laughed out loud, and the noise seemed to startle the animal - it jumped out of the tree.

Kara jumped forward with it, first in alarm and then in absolute wonder as she watched the creature spread his feathered limbs and catch himself on the breeze, shooting upward in flight. They were wings, she realized, and stared in awe as the rest of his flock joined him, scattering through the air before slowly landing back on the branches, looking grumpy and ruffled.

There was nothing like that on Krypton.

The bell rang, a signal to enter the school building, and set off another flurry of startled wings. A student accidentally-on-purpose elbowed Kara as she went to join the queue, and Alex started toward him, hesitant and shameful, always torn between standing up for her new sister and resenting all the wrong kinds of attention Kara drew. On her shoulder, Alex’s daemon shifted into a cat, raising its fur in anger.

Kara saved them both the trouble, grabbing Alex’s arm and redirecting her. “Alex, what are those things?” she hissed urgently.

“What, elbows? I kinda thought you had that one down by now,” Alex answered, raising an eyebrow.

“No, in the trees… the animals with the wings,” Kara said, and her voice went a little too loud and fervent, because other students started glancing her way. Alex colored.

“They’re just birds, Kara. We have them in our backyard, could you maybe be weird about them  in private?” she suggested, and made her way purposely toward the building entrance, deliberately cutting off further conversation.

Birds. Kara committed the word to memory, glancing back at the tree. She had the craziest urge to join them - to just spread her wings and fly upward, away from all these bells and rules and alien customs, and the way that human children snickered at her when she didn’t get things just right. Instead she shifted her school bag more fully onto her shoulders and went inside.

After school, she made her way back to the tree and watched them again as she waited for Eliza to pick them up. No more taking the bus home after the incident with the broken seat during Kara’s second week. She thought there were fewer of them hanging around than earlier in the morning - maybe they’d gotten bored over the eight hours Kara had spent in school. She certainly had.

“Here,” Alex’s voice startled her, and so did the book that she shoved abruptly against Kara’s chest. Alex’s daemon was currently a little box turtle, a form that Kara only recognized because Padmini had been taking it on so often lately. Eliza and Jeremiah speculated that it would become Padmini’s permanent form sometime over the next couple of months. Kara thought that if Alex could wrap herself and everything she loved in permanent armor, she would - it was nice that she could do it for her daemon, at least.

The book was titled, “Birds of the American West Coast: A Field Guide.” Alex was looking away from her, gruff and awkward in the way she got when she felt like she had something to apologize for.

“Thank you,” Kara said, and clutched it to herself.

“Well, you seemed interested, and I was in the library anyways,” Alex said, and kind of nudged Kara with her shoulder. Kara nudged very gently back, careful of her force, and Alex smiled a little.

Kara spent the afternoon in the backyard with her field guide, Nadira beside her as they happily identified every bird they could find in the book.

“That’s the same kind that I was watching in the school yard, Nadira! It’s called…” Kara flipped through her book. “It’s called a sparrow!”

“Hmm…” Nadira was a lumira, which had always been one of her favorite forms on Krypton, but now she stepped cautiously closer to the sparrow, which Kara had enticed with a box of crackers that Eliza had given her. “It can really fly?” she asked doubtfully.

“I saw them,” Kara confirmed. Nadira threw a thoroughly skeptical glance Kara’s way, but her form wavered and shrunk, feathers sprouting, and a moment later she joined the sparrow on the ground, pecking at a cracker in a friendly manner. It flew away, but not very far, landing on a nearby bush to scold Nadira in coarse chirps.

  
Nadira spread her wings in outrage. “Yeah, well, your mother!” she called back, and Kara stared in awe. They’d been on Earth for four months now, and this was the first Earth form Nadira had ever taken. Kara had doubted she ever would.

“I like this form,” Nadira said, trying little hops and jumps. “I feel….. light.”

Thirteen was a bit young for a daemon to settle, and Eliza and Jeremiah were surprised when Nadira kept her sparrow form.

Kara wasn’t. It was the first thing about Earth that ever fit.

**

Once her bird daemon was revealed, some of Kara’s schoolmates theorized she was a witch. Some days Kara wondered if they were right - she kept wishing for invisibility until her wish practically came true. Eyes just slid right by plain, stammering Kara Danvers.

“You know, you wouldn’t be running late if you’d just fly with me,” Nadira said. It was a  well-worn complaint. Kara ignored her with practiced ease, easily weaving through the crowd as she sprinted toward the CatCo building. Her watch said it was 10:07; technically, she still had eight minutes before she was late for her interview.

She sprinted out of the crowded elevator at 10:12 and promptly collided with a goofy looking young man, sending papers flying across the hallway.

“Oh jeez, I’m sorry, here let me get those,” she babbled, narrowly avoiding a brush with the racoon daemon that was chittering rudely at her from beside the man’s feet. She scooped the papers back into a haphazard pile and began to straighten them up. On her shoulder, Nadira spread her wings indignantly, struggling to stay balanced through the flurry of motion.

“Oh, uh, hey look it’s fine,” the guy answered, looking vaguely stunned. “Uh, so, hi, my name’s Winn!” He held his hand out for her and Kara shook it briskly, reminding herself that this awkward man would hopefully be her coworker in the near future. The raccoon climbed up his thin body and leaned in for a closer look at Nadira, who bristled and hid herself behind the fluff of Kara’s ponytail, clearly not appreciating the attention.

He didn’t have much in the way of advice to offer her, but she was still sorry to part ways at the impatient, “Where’s my 10:15!?” that Cat Grant shouted from her office. “Just be yourself?” he offered her weakly. She sent him a parting look of panic, and armed with that and her lead-lined glasses, Kara marched onward.

When she came in through the glass doors, Cat was sitting behind her desk. She cut an impressive figure; her hawk daemon had a modern looking white perch next to her on the desk, and a wall of news screens hung behind them.

The dramatic eye roll contributed a certain something too. “Oh, for god’s sake, I told them not to send me anymore millennials,” she pronounced, actually going so far as to turn her chair in disgust. Cat’s hawk eyed them beadily as Cat continued to denounce Kara’s entire generation, and Nadira shuffled nervously on Kara’s neck - she didn’t like birds of prey.

“So my 10:15, tell me why you’re so special,” Cat said, and the lie flowed easily off of Kara’s tongue - it was the same one she’d been telling since she was thirteen.

“I’m not. I’m not special at all.” Cat looked up at that, startled, and Kara kept going as she sat. “There is nothing special about me, I am completely -” she was cut off by an unexpected fluttering of wings as Nadira took off from Kara’s shoulder and landed delicately on Cat’s desk, shivering a little as she peered up at the enormous hawk.

Kara breathed in sharply once, shocked and a little frightened - she was invulnerable on Earth, but Nadira wasn’t. Those talons looked sharp, and Cat didn’t seem like someone who thought twice about attacking.

The hawk daemon leaned down to inspect Nadira more closely and Nadira held very still, allowing it. Finally she chirped once, inquisitive, and after a long moment, the hawk moved over slightly - Nadira joined it on its perch.

Cat turned back to Kara with a disbelieving, almost angry stare. On the perch, Nadira pressed up against the hawk’s wing, apparently fearless now with her new friend.

“Uh…. but, I’m a very hard worker,” Kara started, trying to get the interview back on track. What was Nadira doing? Cat just kept staring at her, eyes narrowed, lips slightly parted. Kara felt naked underneath that gaze. “I’m extremely committed, and I…. I just want to help. I want to be useful to somebody.”

Cat didn’t respond - didn’t really even seem to register her words. Instead she stood, moving closer to the white perch, and then hunched just a bit to put herself on eye-level with Nadira. Nadira, who never interacted with people, stared back in shameless fascination, and Cat smiled a little.

“Are you this brave?” she asked, turning back to Kara, and Kara straightened her spine.

“I want to be.”

“Well….” Cat’s eyes drifted back to the two birds on her desk. Kara still felt like she couldn’t quite catch her breath, but the hawk didn’t attack, and Cat didn’t either. “You start Monday.”


End file.
